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Ordering Tubes

I checked with the Ace paper tube company and I can get 2500 mason bee tubes for about 11 cents each + shipping. That's a lot, so I'm considering buying from somewhere else. Checking around on the internet it seems there's a lot of people making suprising money off of nesting tubes. Where's the cheapest place to pick up a couple hundred tubes? I have dozens and dozens of mazon bees nesting in the siding of my house, I'm relatively confident I can attract them.

It depends on the quanity you need. I was running out of space on my little 45 tube box, so as I didn't need hundreds, I thought I would test the straw idea out by making the straws myself. In a few spare moments evenings using brown wrapping paper around dowling of the right diameter, (and recruiting my nephew) I got sixty together stuffed in two beer cans. It worked, and it even attracted another more shyer bee - will post the image another time. Half the tubes were filled after two weeks.

I just attended a seminar on pollinatores. The alternative to pricy cardboard tubes is bamboo. Your cut bamboo about 6 inches long (matching the circumference) of the cardboard tubes) and stick a bunch of the bamboo in a cut off rainspout (to keep them dry) which you can hang on a tree. I believe they were saying that one can purchase bamboo poles from K-Mart or such. Here is a link:www.pollinatorparadise.com

Paper tube results

Just an update on the hand-made straws. They worked fine for the last ten days of activities - I used ordinary brown parcel paper wrapped around a 9mm piece of dowelling and when my main box became filled up, the smaller bees took to it ok.

Had 34 tubes sealed out of the 60 offered, and just recently inspected them (hope I have not messed up by doing this too early); at least 10 tubes had cells and pollen but no cocoons, 38 cocoons were counted in all, and there was a pretty massive amount of parasite evidence in comparison to what occurred in the PVC tubes.

Interestingly at the time of adult activity I noticed something resembling a fruit-fly hanging around at the tube entrances - something less in evidence on the box - and multiple white egg-like things infesting at least 20 unsuccessful cells. These were not the tiny mite things that Jim Fischer wrote about (below) when he talked about disinfecting the cells

Originally Posted by Jim Fischer

....To the naked eye, the mites look like mold growing in the entrance of the tubes. Under a microscope at 10x, the "mold" can be seen to move. At 100x, you can see that these are mites. Lots and lots of mites.

I also saw a few tiny crawling creatures in one of the tubes.
I have already got rid of the obvious infections, but at least to me, the paper tubes seems much more vulnerable to infestations than PVC tubes.

Re: Paper tube results

Originally Posted by solitaryb

Just an update on the hand-made straws. They worked fine for the last ten days of activities - I used ordinary brown parcel paper wrapped around a 9mm piece of dowelling and when my main box became filled up, the smaller bees took to it ok.

Had 34 tubes sealed out of the 60 offered, and just recently inspected them (hope I have not messed up by doing this too early); at least 10 tubes had cells and pollen but no cocoons, 38 cocoons were counted in all, and there was a pretty massive amount of parasite evidence in comparison to what occurred in the PVC tubes.

Interestingly at the time of adult activity I noticed something resembling a fruit-fly hanging around at the tube entrances - something less in evidence on the box - and multiple white egg-like things infesting at least 20 unsuccessful cells. These were not the tiny mite things that Jim Fischer wrote about (below) when he talked about disinfecting the cells
I also saw a few tiny crawling creatures in one of the tubes.
I have already got rid of the obvious infections, but at least to me, the paper tubes seems much more vulnerable to infestations than PVC tubes.

What about just using cheap plastic straws? Seems like that would be easier, just cut to length. I know that I have seen some size recommendations that are smaller, but the mason bees I have here will use up to 3/8 fuel line hoses and 3/8 drive socket sets, and spaces as small as the grooves in unassembled honeybee frame top and bottom bars. They really don't seem to be very particular as to size. Fact is, it seems like they will use just about anything between an eighth and a half inch.